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DEL.ICIO.USThree months late, deal nears on 2008 spending
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Don’t run your home budget this way.
The federal government ran out of money, officially, on Sept. 30. Today, finally, the Senate will take up a huge, messy end-of-the-year spending bill to keep the government running for another nine months.
Only one of Congress’ 12 spending bills - the Pentagon’s budget - was signed by President Bush. Bush vetoed two others budgets for health and human services and transportation. Now, with the clock ticking down on the 2007 session, the other 11 bills have been wrapped into a massive, dense omnibus spending bill.
The scene on Capitol Hill over the past two weeks has been one of barely controlled chaos. Lawmakers are scrambling to figure out whether their own pet projects - including $1 million to continue work on Atlanta sewers and drought relief for southeastern farmers - are still in the bill. Meanwhile, senior lawmakers are inserting projects in the bill that were not in any of the previous spending measures, squeezing out projects by the less-powerful.
Congressional aides are often stymied by questions about whether their bosses’ budget requests are funded, semi-funded or dead in this last week of the session. And with all the backroom deal making, they often have only one response: “Last we heard, it was….”
The House late Monday night approved the $516 billion omnibus bill. The Senate is taking it up this afternoon. It includes $485 billion in regular funding and $31 billion for the war in Afghanistan - though it forbids spending that money on the Iraq war.
One high-priority issue for Georgia, the funding for PeachCare, the program that provides health insurance for poor children, has been moved out of the omnibus bill and left on its own for later action.
The White House early on signaled cautious optimism that Bush would sign the massive bill, but later issued a veto threat saying the final version has to have the Iraq money. That money will be added Tuesday.
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